Moose Jaw Warriors
Rink: Temple Gardens Centre
Capacity: 4,714
Built: 2011
League: WHL
City: Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan
Home Of: Moose Jaw Warriors
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: October 6, 2019 vs Regina
Unique Arena: #49
WHL Arena: #8
The since-renamed Temple Gardens Centre is a large Wal Mart Supercentre-looking building that is built right in downtown Moose Jaw, just north of a train yard. The parking lot you see in the above photo foreground isn’t much bigger than what you see in the picture. The main entrance is actually just around the corner of the building. This building aesthetic would fit right in in the suburbs, but not so much for a downtown arena, it just looks very out of place. You enter the building at ground level and there is a team store that oddly enough can’t be accessed during the game, you’ve got to do your shopping before or after the game (at least during our visit in October 2019.) You then go up a large staircase to the main concourse.
When you reach the top of the aforementioned staircase you find yourself in the concourse at the top of the bowl in one of the corners. What lays before you is a pretty typical new age clone rink that you could find in any of the three leagues across the CHL. There are a little more than 4,000 seats, however the building feels bigger than that. Like many clones, the concourse has an open view of the action from around the top of the bowl. The seating and views are decent enough. I do love the “Home of the Warriors” sign below the press box, add that and the seats in team colours and it’s very clear who calls this arena home, which is nice compared to some of the bland rinks across the country.
The suite level goes 2/3 of the way around the building, but much like in Sarnia the suites abruptly end around centre ice on one side of the rink. There is clearly space to fill in that side, and one wonders why they just wouldn’t at least go right to the corner. The end without any suites had two giant Warrior jerseys hanging on the wall, which is something I don’t remember seeing any other team do and is a cool touch. Of course, the jerseys and logo that the Warriors were using during our visit in 2019 soon changed. One hopes they have the updated jerseys up on that wall.
The pictures don’t really show it well, but the lighting in the rink could be improved as the corners of the ice actually had some shadows, meanwhile sitting in row five behind the penalty box we had a couple lights pointed directly at us that should’ve been pointed down at the ice. The concourse by contrast is dimly lit, which for a building as new as it is and with a concourse as wide and open as it is, seems like very poor form. The videoboard for a new building is pretty low quality, very pixelated. Also, several times after the puck was dropped to continue play the music kept playing, not for a second or two like normally happens in many rinks but sometimes for a full 10 seconds. The game presentation the day we were there just wasn’t very good, even for the junior level. The crowd for its size was average atmosphere wise, cheering loudly for goals and hits but not over the top. It wasn’t a library like some rinks, but it wasn’t crazy either. I am told the place rocks with a bigger crowd.
Overall, I would say Temple Gardens Centre is a very good new arena with a ton of potential, but unfortunately what stood out to me was the bad stuff. Thankfully my criticisms of the arena are all very fixable things. Recalibrate the lighting and maybe add a bit more to the concourse. Upgrade the game presentation a bit, and it will gain a lot of points in my book. Fundamentally the building is solid and a good home for the Warriors. Of course, this review is based on a visit from more than six years ago now. Perhaps these are all things that have been improved since then.
